86 replies to this topic

[mhh]

The following is an excerpt of a PM conversation that I had with a moderator at Otakuzone. What is currently happening sounds strangely familiar, and not in a good way.

Yes the moderators are volunteers,
We have this gold system that is really dumb, technically we get paid in 'fake money' and how this website, (i believe) makes money is you buy gold to purchase outfits for your avatar. (So you don't get a real product)
The people who make these outfits are volunteers, the people who patrol the forums are volunteers, and the admin is a volunteer, yet everything we do makes money for noez's.
We did have one person named Alice who actually worked for Noez, but a few months ago they fired her. No one on the site has contact with noez, so you can imagine how crazy it is. There are so many glitches.
Pretty much they have no staff on the site, yet they are making lots of money, technically off of children since most of the volunteers are around 14.

The bad thing that really gets me about OZ, is that we have something like manga-updates, where we have a manga/anime database, a few months ago they installed this new feature where you can put links to read chapters of a manga. (Also this give no credit whatsoever to the translation group)
At first i saw nothing wrong with it, but then i got messages from escalators who were upset, they were saying that they did not want a link to there work on OZ, since they did not support NOEZ that owns mangafox.

I then agreed with them, so i started to delete the links (Since i have complete control over the Database).
After maybe a week, NOEZ contacted alice and said i had no right to do that, since they were links to the chapters and i was wrong to delete them.

I also heard of people on the site who bought 'gold' from there credit cards, are they were only suppose to cost 2$ but it would cost 10$ without there consent.

Aditionally there's a blog post from their admin here

To preserve the content in the link above I'll put it's contents in a spoiler tag here.

Spoiler

Bringing to Light These Things Which Must be Said [Updated]

I guess the best place to start would be why I am writing this blog, and that reason would just for me to put my thoughts and opinions down in text of some kind.

Sadly as it is just so obvious I will state it again just to make my mind at ease by knowing I at least mentioned this. After 2010 OtakuZone has been declining due to a few different reasons.

Scammers
Low Staff Involvement in the Site
Hacking
Basically No Support from NOEZ

Now a lot of people see NOEZ and are thinking: "What is NOEZ", well then let me explain. NOEZ is the company that owns OtakuZone along with many other sites such as Mangafox, Mangahere, animehere, and a lot of links down at the bottom of this site in the footer. Long story short, they have complete "back-end" control of the site. That means changing any of the site coding is something only they can do, site wide banning is something only they can do, and dealing with issues with the coding again is all them.

After 2010 NOEZ has turned a blind eye to most of OtakuZone leaving us to run the site ourselves while at the same time not being able to fix or change almost anything. The only person who doesn't fit in that category would be Alice, she has done the most she can for OtakuZone and still does, it is just not seen. Any bans are still carried out that are brought to her, any site issues that are urgent that are brought to her are usually fixed by her doing. A lot of thanks should be going towards her as this is all done in her free time, she is not working on OtakuZone anymore as an employee but as a generous person.

At this point if it has not already been in your head you may be wondering why the Admin (which is me currently) is not able to do anything about all these issues which have been thrust at me. Well, that's simple, I can basically do nothing. The only people who have power on the site to do something big are NOEZ employees and they refuse to share that power with those that do not work for them.

Next question that should come to you: Aaron, what the hell do you do then?

Answer: I am the USER Admin, meaning I am only supposed to deal with user issues such as conflicts between members and making decision about the site when it is needed. If any of you are familiar with the United States government then you could compare my position to the Vice President, not even that. He basically has no power, it is all in name only BUT, that doesn't mean I do nothing, every ban request that is sent, an ysuspician that I get, and most site issues are all reported and they are taken care of by Alice.

At this point you must be thinking: "Oh God, why is OZ still alive?" I have a few theories about this but I will leave that to discuss amongst yourselves.

Now, let's move on to current issues~

The biggest by far would probably have to be Scammers or maybe the forum. The forum has become neglected and I personally share a lot of the blame for this as my inactivity causes a strain on the forum staff which have basically been running without me for months. Scammers have became increasing annoying to hear about, the only reason they are able to succeed is because the users themselves fall for it. I would love to create some sort of trade system but I can't as I have explained why above.

An issue that really annoys me would be chat itself. The very foundation of the chat has changed a lot since Jeli's time and the result is a sad state. The general being of an Otaku is to have fun, to be social, and to be all around carefree, it's hard in chat now. The rules have become too strict for users to actually enjoying being there. The "30 minute" option for bans has also been removed apparently in the eyes of the chat mods. The normal time for a ban used to be 30 minutes but slowly changed to 1 hour. It's probably counterproductive to criticize my own staff but it's really needed. The chat room if it wishes to become as active as it used to be must be changed one way or another. If it comes to the point where I have to step in then I will resort to that, maybe even undermining a few people in the process ._.

The issue aside the next step would be to try and find ways to help save OtakuZone, or at least slow the decline. A large part of this will need to be staff involvement in the site, not by doing their jobs but by interacting with the users like they used to. A find that chat mods seem to have the largest trouble with this, as lurking becomes second nature soon after they become a mod.

Another way to help would be user awareness, you as the users should know more about OtakuZone by getting involved and by learning safety and security to prevent things like hacking and scamming.

Last but not least we must somehow get NOEZ to acknowledge us again, to believe we are worth spending effort and time into. I personally do not have a lot of ideas of how to make this work as NOEZ themselves are very hard to contact to the point where anything progresses past ideas and "maybes". if anyone has any ideas please feel free to post them.

One last thing, it would be awesome for you guys to make this the top blog for others to see this ^-^

it would really help OtakuZone as a whole if they could.

Update [2/27/12]: In an effort to help the Forum I have decided to step away from the position of Forum Super Mod, I have done done enough and/or anything recently to help the forum. I have decided that the new Forum Super Mod will be chosen tomorrow or later in the week. I hope everyone will accept the new Forum Super Mod with open arms.

[Anju]

Some known NOEZ sites:
mangafox.com/
mangahere.com/
mangarush.com/
tenmanga.com/
mangayes.com/
mangable.com/
otakushop.com
Anime-eden.com
Wallpaperfox.com
Wallpaperhere.com
Otakuzone.com
Animeonline.net
game321.com

Info gotten from http://japanzai.com/index.php?topic=1619.0

[Kalladin]

Link to below quote:
http://vatoto.com/forums/topic/5527-informationmangafox-co-how-noez-does-business/page__view__findpost__p__18223

Hi, just found this thread while i googled Noez, since there website (noez.com) wasn´t functioning anymore.

My name is Asa and i´m Admin of zomgforums, the forums of the former streaming site zomganime. Our site was sold in 2009 by his owner to Noez
and since then everything we worked for has been ruined. In the beginning Noez had one of their ppl as additional Admin to our Forum so he could
be in contact with us, as we all were still working on the mainsite, adding new episodes and repairing broken links. At first they were nice asking us
about everything before they changed something, but after some times we came to the site just to see it has a new Design, which had a lot of flaws
and also on some pages, terrible chinese english, nobody could understand, They said it was just a test. The test design was never removed and some ppl
left the staff because of the chinese, they were the owners but what they did was just crap.
Some users of the mainsite (who never visited the forums) were asking why we did this and we tried to explain
that it was the new owners ideas that slowly were ruining the site. After a while most of the visitors were used to it and didn´t complain anymore,
while some of our staff wanted to go because of the "chinese overlords" and some others were just banned for saying "too directly" what they thought
(yeah if that isn´t chinese thinking i dunno what else).
After the next reboot of the mainsite nobody of us had access to the wordpress login of the site anymore and we were just Forum staff from this time.
Angry users came to the forums asking what the hell we were doing, that their favorite series was gone and nobody repaired the links
and all we could do was just say, that we can´t reapair them any longer.
The last part was that zomganime as a url and site name got deleted....it is now animehere.com!
We were the #2 of the animestreaming sites a few years ago, now all the work was for nothing.

http://traffic.alexa...=zomganime.com

We once had a reach of 0,06%-0,07% and even with 0,01% we were still better than animehere is now!

Noez is still based in Hanghzou, but most of the money is going over their USA account in New York.
The company was never interrested in, what we thought is right. If they had listend to us, they obviously could have made a ton
more money, but it looks like they don´t want anyone else to interfere with their site.
Their international site is down, but noez.com.cn is still working, also the deleted every detail you could find of them on all their sites,
only with a "who is", you can see that all the sites are still them, i guess with all the lawsuits they don´t wanted to be on the "about us" sites anymore^^

One week ago the link on animehere, to the forums (which were still zomgforums) got changed to another Forum, looks like they still don´t like
Anti-Chinese talk in their Forums

So the best is to stay away from that company if you don´t want to make money for them without getting anything for yourself

Not to disagree with you or anything, the Internet has grown a lot. So percentage is not the best estimate on how big your site was and it's successor is now.

And Redemption has a point, you're taking out your hate on the rest of the Chinese population. Just look at your statements, "some ppl, left the staff because of the chinese, they" and "(yeah if that isn´t chinese thinking i dunno what else)".

Who are you blaming Noez or 1.3 Billion people in China? You really need to clear that up.

Update: mhh previously a similar topic was pinned, then unpinned, then closed. Are we reviving that thread again?

Edited by Kalladin, 12 April 2012 - 01:22 AM.

[damienthedevil]

I think it's wrong to say that Scanslators are in the wrong because we kick up a storm. I'm a part time Translator for a local team so I understand. I take up a lot of time and effort to translate one chapter so I would at least hope that people would appreciate it.

I mean, if I found out that the manga that I work so hard to translate was just shared somewhere else without even giving us credit or even removing the page, I would be at least a little pissed off. I'm not saying the manga belong to me. It belongs to the author but still I would at least want people to give me credit where it's due.

[Fragile]

At this point I'm just deciding that it's better not to get too heavily involved in either side...

Before I discovered Batoto, I was of the opinion that, yes, I appreciate the people who translate the manga I love to read, and I heeded the cries of support in purchasing published volumes of manga I like were they made available close to me. Yes, I appreciate those people who do work I can't imagine, and I enjoy reading it. But I didn't ask them to translate manga for me. They were doing it before I even knew about it.

And yes, you can argue that if they stopped translating and providing me that manga I enjoy, I would be upset. But myself as an individual would deal with that and find something else to do. At the end of the day, the translations I'm reading are not owned by the people who translate them. RAW providers and editors and translators, they're all doing what they do of their own free will. They are CHOOSING to do what they do. Nobody is forcing them.

So, I'm just going to point out who's doing what wrong from my point of view, without really providing a solution. I feel like there are people who take sides on this issue without understanding who is at fault for what.

The readers are at fault for acting like the ability to read something entertaining in a way they can understand is a right, rather than a privilege. Well, it's a privilege, not a right.

The scanlators are at fault for taking things too seriously. Drama. Yep. They're competing. Over what? Piracy? Call it what you like, that's what it is. I pirate music all the time and I don't feel bad about it. And sometimes I tell people that I purchase products properly if I appreciate the provider enough, but so? I still pirated their music before I bought it.

If the scanlators don't want to feel cheated in working hard for no profit so that someone else can profit over their service-mindedness, then they should just stop. I'll survive. Seriously.

We're all stealing. We need to accept and be comfortable with that before we can even hope to address Scanlator's Wishes vs. The Tyrannical NEOZ Empire. That said, AFAIK Batoto has a passive policy concerning Scanlator vs. Distributor. The fine print reads: We put our readers first, and I haven't seen anything to the contrary yet.

Right now I'm hella pissed at Japanzai. Why don't they just shut down, instead of bitching? I'd rather NOT read Love So Life than put up with the bullshit they're spouting about some hiatus.

Edited by DJ Fatalyst, 12 April 2012 - 11:04 PM.

[Hellion Twins]

-

I believe, the main point is having credits removed.
Personally, I find much of your stand offensive but you're entitled to your opinion.

I'd just give you an example of why scanlators feel offended and maybe you'd be kinder in opinion to them.
If you wrote a fan fiction, which was well received to a certain point, but had it taken from you and credited to someone else, you would surely be pissed.

Not just that, people are paying that other person for your fan fiction. Here's a breakdown.
You =

• - opportunity costs
• - electrical costs
• - machinery costs
• - (sometimes) manga costs - for raws
• - work translating cost
• - last but not least Hosting Cost.
  
• + Adverts Income (from site traffic)
• + Donations (from fans)

Person stealing Your work (NOEZ) =

• - minimum site costs such as bots to take chapters off you
• - Hosting Cost
  
• + Adverts Income
• + Donation / Subscription
• + Pirated fake products

The size difference is to show a difference in income and expense.
According to your logic, even if you're incurring high costs putting it up, you didn't have to. You could just send it to some friends of yours. You didn't have to give it to all those other people who are interested even though you have already done it for yourself and it's sitting there doing nothing. But you did put it up to share with everyone else and everyone else is doing their little part to help you reduce the putting up costs. They aren't feeding you. Just helping with the hosting cost.

BUT! It is not your property. It's a fan fic and so the property is the original author's.
To say you're stealing, of course you are. You're stealing the author's characters and concepts and ideas.
Then there's another person who took your free thing and is making excess money off those people you're trying to share it with and you aren't allowed to be pissed. More than that, you're actually trying to help the author get their works sold but because of the piracy from NOEZ, they aren't profiting at all and targeting you instead.

You can't put up with the hosting costs anymore and then you stop doing it. Then people scold and blame you for not continuing. (I notice the part where you acknowledge some people take it as their right rather than privilege.)

You will feel indignant. You will feel accused. You will feel unappreciated. All these things that was not what you put in effort for and all the more you will feel resentment. You won't even want to help your favorite mangaka publicize their work anymore and their popularity will be stuck in Japan. And if their Japan sales tank while their foreign sales could have skyrocketed, the mangaka will lose their job. These are all the things to consider.

There's plenty of reasons for scanlators to be pissed. That's not to say there aren't bad scanlation groups out there, but majority aren't like that and they are greatly exploited. It's like taking a child's painting and selling it very high as your own abstract art.

What I'm saying is :\ I don't like how you phrased your words and gave me the impression that we're no better than NOEZ. We are, in a sense, trying to be considerate of publishers who realize our existence and do our best to accommodate them, while trying to reach out to as many as possible who don't have ready access or language barriers to the amazing works we have.

[Fragile]

What I'm saying is :\ I don't like how you phrased your words and gave me the impression that we're no better than NOEZ. We are, in a sense, trying to be considerate of publishers who realize our existence and do our best to accommodate them, while trying to reach out to as many as possible who don't have ready access or language barriers to the amazing works we have.

I understand that I have a tendency to word things in a way that is more inflammatory that necessary, and I have a habit of speaking without thinking carefully enough. My intention isn't to bother people, but I have to fix that part of myself, so I can only apologize half-heartedly for bothering anyone who reads my post.

Concerning my statement about "batoto's fine print." I should include the scanlators as well. The reader, batoto, comes second, and I wanted to express my desire that a community of service-minded readers and service-minded scanlators could come together. As far as I can tell in the few days I've been on the forums, batoto might be it.

Futurama has a quote from an episode about Bender meeting God: When you do things right, people won't know if you've done anything at all.

Before last year, I wasn't even aware of the difference between scanlators and readers. I thought all scanlators were nice blokes who enjoyed sharing their labor with everyone. OFC my primary source was onemanga, which seems to have a legacy that is spoken of, even here...

But it's only when I got ridiculous watermarks on an MF manga, these big blaring banners that made it impossible to enjoy, that I showed any concern for the situation. And my reaction was violently negative. I'd never seen anything that blatantly ostentatious before. Those recruitment posters that parody angry readers who unfairly pressure scanlators become cute and fuzzy in comparison. I used to roll my eyes at them, but now I appreciate them, after watermark explosion.

So far as I can see, the other scanlation groups persevere quietly. But I haven't imagined or seen any other struggles, so I don't really know. But from the perspective of a reader, it begs the question: Why so serious?

[Hellion Twins]

So far as I can see, the other scanlation groups persevere quietly. But I haven't imagined or seen any other struggles, so I don't really know. But from the perspective of a reader, it begs the question: Why so serious?

I'm glad you didn't take much offense to my post. The reason for why so serious, perhaps you should read the Information thread again. It's been updated.

There actually are serious consequences. I can't name names because I'm absent minded and poor at that, but scan groups have closed down from publisher pressure which more likely than not, resulted from NOEZ's profiteering.

For example, if the publishers see profiteering, it is considered stealing. Like how youtube music AMVs aren't supposed to be selling or made unless copyright is paid if footage or music from a licensed agency is used. Fan works are supposed to be free. Donations for hosting is negligible.

In publishers' eyes, NOEZ is setting a very bad impression of profiteering rather than promotion of their product. They are creating pirated goods and some of their websites take subscriptions as 'producers' when all they are doing is ripping off fan works to sell. In turn, these publishers turn their wrath towards scanlation and anime translation groups who weren't profiteering at all. Some have even legal consequences.

In a sense, it hurts us readers because we lose a source of access to something we have come to love. In another sense, it hurts us as fans as a whole because the scanlators are fans who are being punished by their 'idols' for something someone else did.

NOEZ is hurting the entire scanlation community and more and more fans/scanlators are unwilling to help out that much anymore. We even lost Prozess (a translator for tons of work) for now/awhile/forever?

When this happens, the real manga itself actually gets less publicity. True, international and foreign sales of anime and manga are quite small but it has been gaining traction thanks to the community. It has even helped some manga and animes launch internationally, benefiting the creators. Like Bleach and Naruto for example. Without proved foreign interest, the manga/anime industry wouldn't have made such a huge venture in the first place.

What if an awesome manga was missed out by the Japanese population but was of a theme and plot beloved by the US? It would simply die off without any publicity if no one translated it. After all, how many US citizens is fully capable of reading a Japanese manga? It is for these works that scanlators also work hard for and in turn benefits the mangaka.

If NOEZ's damage to the online community continues at this rate, we might no longer have what we have now and its negative consequences for everyone in general. NOEZ will simply close down and move on to the next revenue.

I hope that helped you understand why the struggle is so serious.

[Fragile]

I might be a pessimist, but I see an endless and unstoppable cycle. As long as there are people willing to translate manga and provide it to anyone other than themselves (free or otherwise), there are people who will sub-contract that work and make profit for themselves.

As long as there are people willing to translate manga and provide it to anyone other than themselves (free or otherwise), there will still be an excuse for publishers to attack these people for copyright theft and content piracy.

Edited by DJ Fatalyst, 13 April 2012 - 04:57 PM.

[Grumpy]

I have unpinned and re-merged the two topics that were split.

While it's important to highlight issues in the scanlation world, their status shouldn't be so important to our existence that we should have a pinned thread about it for so long (let alone two).

[Rakurai Amatsu]

Just curious and wanted to ask and may be shooting myself in the foot, is Mangareader.net affiliated with MF cause I was never to sure if they were or not?, I personally have always disliked MF but was sorta forced to them and mangareader because of what happened to onemanga and wanted to know and finally after investigating through here and the scanlators am I finding truth behind why MF are such &*^%*%

[Hellion Twins]

Just curious and wanted to ask and may be shooting myself in the foot, is Mangareader.net affiliated with MF cause I was never to sure if they were or not?, I personally have always disliked MF but was sorta forced to them and mangareader because of what happened to onemanga and wanted to know and finally after investigating through here and the scanlators am I finding truth behind why MF are such &*^%*%

They aren't affiliated but just as greedy, except for the fact that they're less hypocrite?
http://vatoto.com/forums/topic/4546-mangareader/]Read this thread[/url].

Last time I checked, there are still loads of misguided people on OTAKU WEBSITES (you'd think they'd be smarter) bitching on Batoto making a fuss and such, their last post date being April 2012. I really should stop reading those things, because they make me so mad with how ignorant they are by not even bothering to use simple google to check and just asked and piled together their own misunderstandings.

They still fully believe that MF has their own scanlators and they scanlate the material that they read and they still bash on scanlators as a whole. Hopefully, April was April and they are now wiser. (I doubt it though...)

[Rakurai Amatsu]

They aren't affiliated but just as greedy, except for the fact that they're less hypocrite?
http://vatoto.com/forums/topic/4546-mangareader/]Read this thread[/url].

Last time I checked, there are still loads of misguided people on OTAKU WEBSITES (you'd think they'd be smarter) bitching on Batoto making a fuss and such, their last post date being April 2012. I really should stop reading those things, because they make me so mad with how ignorant they are by not even bothering to use simple google to check and just asked and piled together their own misunderstandings.

They still fully believe that MF has their own scanlators and they scanlate the material that they read and they still bash on scanlators as a whole. Hopefully, April was April and they are now wiser. (I doubt it though...)

thanks for the reply and Info answers my question greatly MF MR and Batoto are the only online readers I use but as for MF I only use them for what Manga Reader and Batoto don't have which is like only 3 manga that is on my reading list so a very minimum visit to them anyway and I should say only 2 manga's now since the Muv Luv(1st series) manga has been stalled for sometime now and low chance of revival

[Hellion Twins]

thanks for the reply and Info answers my question greatly MF MR and Batoto are the only online readers I use but as for MF I only use them for what Manga Reader and Batoto don't have which is like only 3 manga that is on my reading list so a very minimum visit to them anyway and I should say only 2 manga's now since the Muv Luv(1st series) manga has been stalled for sometime now and low chance of revival

It's okay, as long as the word gets out about what's happening
I only keep my MF account for going back to check my bookmarks for my manga list - to search for other readers to read them on.

I still wish there's a way to compile reading lists/bookmarks...

[Buttock Follicle]

Use mangaupdates lol, soooo much better than the follows list here

[Hellion Twins]

Use mangaupdates lol, soooo much better than the follows list here

No idea how to. ; . ; or should i use baka updates? which one has more manga? and yaoi listings?

[Buttock Follicle]

Mangaupdates is bakaupdates XD

There's a button on the right sidebar saying 'my lists' i think you can work it out from there ^^

[Hellion Twins]

Mangaupdates is bakaupdates XD There's a button on the right sidebar saying 'my lists' i think you can work it out from there ^^

Oh okay T.T Thanks! -still wishes for import function on MF to BakaUD- I have like... over 600-800 there... @.@

[akalasedge]

Hm. I might be revealing myself as a bit of a greybeard here, but does anyone remember the whole Tazmo and NarutoFan noise from several-to-many years ago? Because this sounds like the same sort of noise, in a different incarnation.

[Hellion Twins]

Hm. I might be revealing myself as a bit of a greybeard here, but does anyone remember the whole Tazmo and NarutoFan noise from several-to-many years ago? Because this sounds like the same sort of noise, in a different incarnation.

It's the same, with Noez playing Tazmo's role. It's not noise though, there's many things involved, mainly ethics.
Or we can all just quit providing people with translated/scanlated online mangas.
And people will still bitch and scold us for stopping and being selfish and not sharing. <- This happened.